From the Cheap Seats: Chinese Iced Tea

CHINA TEMP HITS 28 YR LOW: China cannot be both the biggest emitter of greenhouse gases and an icebox. Can it?

While Coloradans are sweltering in subfreezing and frequent subzero temperatures this winter, it’s colder than week-old take-out in China, cold enough that the shark fin in the soup is circling just to stay warm, so cold that the Gobi nomads are huddling together to preserve body heat.

Just how cold is it in the Middle Kingdom? The mercury has dipped to the lowest average in 28 years. It’s so cold that 1,000 ships are trapped in coastal ice.

The China Meteorological Administration pegs the cold at an average of minus-3.8 degrees Celsius, 1.3 degrees colder than the previous average.

Even India has taken notice of the cold. The Times of India says the Kashmir Valley is ashiver in unusual cold and it’s not exactly shocking that the Kashmir in the north would be cold, but this spell is colder than usual.

How ever can this be? China is now the world’s largest emitter of carbon dioxide, which, we’re constantly being lectured, is the most common of the greenhouse gases.

So how can it possibly be cold in China?

Really? This is a Confucian nightmare.

China cannot be both the biggest emitter of greenhouse gases and an icebox. Can it?

Elites, says Mishin, “moved to use this new ‘science’ to guilt-trip and scaremonger their populations into smaller and more conservative forms of living” and thus protect their own pre-eminent positions.

Cheap Seats doesn’t necessarily subscribe to Mishin’s entire line of reasoning – and we definitely don’t have a subscription to Pravda, but maybe the old boy is on to something.